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pounds, even allowing for great difference in value of money, seems a small sum for the two freehold houses, with gardens and orchards, sold to him by Edmund and Emma Hall.

trifling sum of 41. by the sale of her share of two messuages in Snitterfield1.

It has been supposed that he might not at this time reside in Stratford-upon-Avon, and that for this reason, he It is, we apprehend, indisputable that soon after this only contributed 3s. 4d. for pikemen, &c., and nothing to the date the tide of John Shakespeare's affairs began to turn, poor of the town, in 1578. This notion is refuted by the and that he experienced disappointments and losses which fact, that in the deed for the sale of his wife's property in seriously affected his pecuniary circumstances. Malone Snitterfield to Webbe, in 1579, he is called "John Shackwas in possession of several important facts upon this sub- spere of Stratford-upon-Avon," and in the bond for the perject, and recently a strong piece of confirmatory testimony förmance of covenants, " Johannem Shackspere de Stratfordhas been procured. We will first advert to that which was upon-Avon, in comitat. Warwici." Had he been resident in the hands of Malone, applicable to the beginning of at Ingon, or at Snitterfield, he would hardly have been de1578. At a borough hall on the 29th Jan. in that year, it scribed as of Stratford-upon-Avon. Another point rewas ordered that every alderman in Stratford should pay quiring notice in connexion with these two newly-discovered 6s. 8d., and every burgess 3s. 4d. towards "the furniture of documents is, that in both John Shakespeare is termed three pikemen, two billmen, and one archer." Now, al- "yeoman," and not glover: perhaps in 1579, although he though John Shakespeare was not only an alderman, but continued to occupy a house in Stratford, he had relinhad been chosen "head alderman" in 1571, he was allowed quished his original trade, and having embarked in agriculto contribute only 3s. 4d., as if he had been merely a bur- tural pursuits, to which he had not been educated, had been gess: Humphrey Plymley, another alderman, paid 5s., unsuccessful. This may appear not an unnatural mode of while John Walker, Thomas Brogden, and Anthony Turner accounting for some of his difficulties. In the midst of contributed 2s. 6d. each, William Brace 2s., and Robert them, in the spring of 1580, another son, named Edmund, Bratt "nothing in this place." It is possible that Bratt (perhaps after Edmund Lambert, the mortgagee of Ashad been called upon to furnish a contribution in some byes) was born, and christened at the parish church2. other place, or perhaps the words are to be taken to mean, that he was excused altogether; and it is to be remarked that in the contribution to the poor in Sept. 1564, Bratt was the only individual who gave no more than fourpence. In November, 1578, when it was required that every alderman should "pay weekly to the relief of the poor 4d.," John Shakespeare and Robert Bratt were excepted: they were "not to be taxed to pay any thing," while two others (one of them Alderman Plymley) were rated at 3d. a week. In March, 1578-9, when another call was made upon the town for the purpose of purchasing corslets, calivers, &c., the name of John Shakespeare is found, at the end of the account, in a list of persons whose "sums were unpaid and unaccounted for." Another fact tends strongly to the conclusion that in 1578 John Shakespeare was distressed for money he owed a baker of the name of Roger Sadler 57., for which Edmund Lambert, and a person of the name of Cornishe, had become security: Sadler died, and in his will, dated 14th November, 1578, he included the following among the debts due to him :-" Item of Edmund Lambert and Cornishe, for the debt of Mr. John Shacksper, 57.”

Malone conjectured that Edmund Lambert was some relation to Mary Shakespeare, and there can be little doubt of it, as an Edward Lambert had married her sister Joan Arden. To Edmund Lambert John Shakespeare, in 1578, mortgaged his wife's estate in Ashton Cantlowe, called Asbyes, for 407., an additional circumstance to prove that he was in want of money; and so severe the pressure of his necessities about this date seems to have been, that in 1579 he parted with his wife's interest in two tenements in Snitterfield to Robert Webbe for the small sum of 4l. This is a striking confirmation of John Shakespeare's embarrassments, with which Malone was not acquainted; but the original deed, with the bond for the fulfilment of covenants, (both bearing date 15th Oct. 1579) subscribed with the distinct marks of John and Mary Shakespeare, and sealed with their respective seals, is in the hands of the Shakespeare Society. His houses in Stratford descended to his son, but they may have been mortgaged at this period, and it is indisputable that John Shakespeare divested himself, in 1578 and 1579, of the landed property his wife had brought him, being in the end driven to the extremity of raising the

1 The property is thus described in the indenture between John Shakespeare and his wife, and Robert Webbe. For and in consideration of the sum of 47. in hand paid, they "give, graunte, bargayne, and sell unto the said Robert Webbe, his heires and assignes for ever, all that theire moitye, parte, and partes, be it more or lesse, of and in two messuages or tenementes, with thappurtenances, sett, lyinge and beynge in Snitterfield aforesaid, in the said county of Warwicke." The deed terminates thus:

"In witnesse whereof the parties above said to these present indentures interchangeablie have put theire handes and seales, the day and yeare fyrst above wrytten.

The market of John Shackspere. The marke M of Marye Shackspere.

Education of William

CHAPTER IV.

Shakespeare: probably at the freeschool of Stratford. At what time, and under what circumstances, he left school. Possibly an assistant in the school, and afterwards in an attorney's office. His handwriting. His marriage with Anne Hathaway. The preliminary bond given by Fulk Sandells and John Richardson. Birth of Susanna, the first child of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne, in 1583. Shakespeare's opinion on the marriage of persons of disproportionate age. His domestic circumstances. Aune Hathaway's family.

Ar the period of the sale of their Snitterfield property by his father and mother, William Shakespeare was in his sixteenth year, and in what way he had been educated is mere matter of conjecture. It is highly probable that he was at the free-school of Stratford, founded by Thomas Jolyffe in the reign of Edward IV., and subsequently chartered by Edward VI.; but we are destitute of all evidence beyond Rowe's assertion. Of course, we know nothing of the time when he might have been first sent there; but if so sent between 1570 and 1578, Walter Roche, Thomas Hunt, and Thomas Jenkins, were successively masters, and from them he must have derived the rudiments of his Latin and Greek. That his father and mother could give him no instruction of the kind is quite certain from the proof we have adduced, that neither of them could write; but this very deficiency might render them more desirous that their eldest son, at least, if not their children in general, should receive the best education circumstances would allow. The free grammar-school of Stratford afforded an opportunity of which, it is not unlikely, the parents of William Shakespeare availed themselves.

As we are ignorant of the time when he went to school, we are also in the dark as to the period when he left it. Rowe, indeed, has told us that the poverty of John Shakespeare, and the necessity of employing his son profitably at home, induced him, at an early age, to withdraw him "Sealed and delivered in the presens of Nycholas Knoolles, Vicar of Anston, Wyllyam Maydes, and Anthony Osbaston, with other moe."

The seal affixed by John Shakespeare has his initials I. S. upon it, while that appended to the mark of his wife represents a rudely-engraved horse. The mark of Mary Shakespeare seems to have been intended for an uncouth imitation of the letter M. With reference to the word "moiety," used throughout the indenture, it is to be remembered that at its date the term did not, as now, imply half, but any part, or share. Shakespeare repeatedly so uses it. 2 The register contains the following:

"1580. May 3. Edmund sonne to Mr. John Shakspere."

1

from the place of instruction. Such may have been the and it would be easy to multiply them. We may presume case; but, in considering the question, we must not leave that, if so employed, he was paid something for his ser out of view the fact, that the education of the son of a mem- vices; for, if he were to earn nothing, his father could have ber of the corporation would cost nothing; so that, if the had no other motive for taking him from school. Supposboy were removed from school at the period of his father's ing him to have ceased to receive instruction from Jenkins embarrassments, the expense of continuing his studies there in 1579, when John Shakespeare's distresses were appacould not have entered into the calculation: he must have rently most severe, we may easily imagine that he was, for been taken away, as Rowe states, in order to aid his father the next year or two, in the office of one of the seven atin the maintenance of his family, consisting, after the death torneys in Stratford, whose names Malone introduces. That of his daughter Anne in 1579, and the birth of his son Ed- he wrote a good hand we are perfectly sure, not only from mund in 1580, of his wife and five children. However, we the extant specimens of his signature, when we may supare without the power of confirming or contradicting Rowe's pose him to have been in health, but from the ridicule which, in "Hamlet," (act v. sc. 2) he throws upon such as affected

statement.

"I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair."

Aubrey has asserted positively, in his MSS. in the Ash-to write illegibly : molean Museum, that "in his younger years Shakespeare had been a schoolmaster in the country;" and the truth may be, though we are not aware that the speculation has ever been hazarded, that being a young man of abilities, and In truth, many of his dramatic contemporaries wrote exrapid in the acquisition of knowledge, he had been em-cellently: Ben Jonson's penmanship was beautiful; and ployed by Jenkins (the master of the school from 1577 to Peele, Chapman, Dekker, and Marston, (to say nothing of 1580, if not for a longer period) to aid him in the instruc- some inferior authors) must have given printers and copytion of the junior boys. Such a course is certainly not very ists little trouble.* unusual, and it may serve to account for this part of Aubrey's narrative.2

Excepting by mere tradition, we hear not a syllable regarding William Shakespeare from the time of his birth We decidedly concur with Malone in thinking, that after until he had considerably passed his eighteenth year, and Shakespeare quitted the free-school, he was employed in then we suddenly come to one of the most important events the office of an attorney. Proofs of something like a legal of his life, established upon irrefragable testimony: we aleducation are to he found in many of his plays; and it may lude to his marriage with Anne Hathaway, which could not be safely asserted, that they do not occur anything like so have taken place before the 28th Nov. 1582, because on frequently in the dramatic productions of his contempo- that day two persons, named Fulk Sandells and John Richraries. We doubt if, in the whole works of Marlowe, ardson entered into a preliminary bond (which we subjoin Greene, Peele, Jonson, Heywood, Chapman, Marston, Dek-in a note") in the penalty of 40l. to be forfeited to the bishop ker, and Webster, so many law terms and allusions are to of the diocese of Worcester, if it were thereafter found that be found, as in only six or eight plays by Shakespeare; and, there existed any lawful impediment to the solemnization moreover, they are applied with much technical exactness of matrimony between William Shakespeare and Anne and propriety. Malone has accumulated some of these, Hathaway, of Stratford. It is not known at what church the

Life.

1 "The narrowness of his father's circumstances, and the want of his assistance at home, forced his father to withdraw him from thence, and unhappily prevented his farther proficiency."-Rowe's 2 Aubrey cites "Mr. Beeston" as his authority, and as persons of that name were connected with theatres before the death of Shakespeare, and long afterwards, we ought to treat the assertion with the more respect. Simon Forman, according to his Diary, was employed in this way in the free-school where he was educated, and was paid by the parents of the boys for his assistance. The same might be the case with Shakespeare.

justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory (on this side idolatry) as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature; had an excellent fancy, facility, that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped. brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his own power; would the use of it had been so too!"

Hence he proceeds to instance a passage in "Julius Cæsar." Ben Jonson then adds in conclusion:- But he redeemed his vices with his virtues: there was ever more in him to be praised, than to be pardoned." Consistently with what Ben Jonson tells us above the players had "often mentioned," we find the following in the address of Heminge and Condell, "To the great variety of Readers," before the folio of 1623 :-" His mind and hand went together, and what he thought he uttered with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot in his papers."

thus:

The instrument, divested of useless formal contractions, runs "Noverint universi per presentes, nos Fulconem Sandells de Stratford in comitatu Warwici, agricolam, et Johannem Richardson ibidem agricolam, teneri et firmiter obligari Ricardo Cosin, generoso, et Roberto Warmstry, notario publico, in quadraginta libris bonæ et le galis monetæ Angliæ solvendis eisdem Ricardo et Roberto, heredibus, executoribus, vel assignatis suis, ad quam quidem solutionem bene et fideliter faciendam obligamus nos, et utrumque nostrum, per se pro toto et in solido, heredes, executores, et administratores nostros firmiter per presentes, sigillis nostris sigillatos. Datum 28 die NoFranciæ, et Hiberniæ Reginæ, Fidei Defensoris. &c. 250.

3 A passage from the epistle of Thomas Nash before Greene's "Menaphon," has been held by some to apply to Shakespeare, to his "Hamlet," and to his early occupation in an attorney's office. The best answer to this supposition is an attention to dates: "Menaphon" was not printed for the first time, as has been supposed, in 1589, but in 1587; in all probability before Shakespeare had written any play, much less "Hamlet." The "Hamlet" to which Nash alludes must have been the old drama, which was in existence long before Shakespeare took up the subject. The terms Nash employs are these; and it is to be observed, that by noverint he means an attorney or attorney's clerk, employed to draw up bonds, &c., commencing Noverint universi, &c. "It is a common practice now-a-dayes, amongst a sort of shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of noverint, whereto they were borne, and busie themselves with the indevours of art, that could scarcely Latinize their neck verse, if they should have neede: yet English Seneca, read by candle-light, yields many good sentences, as Bloud is a beg-vembris, anno Regni Dominæ nostræ Elizabethæ, Dei gratia Anglia, ger, and so forth; and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches." Hence we may possibly infer that the author of the old Hamlet," preceding Shakespeare's tragedy, had been an attorney's clerk. In 1587, Shakespeare was only in his twenty-third year, and could hardly be said by that time to have "run through every art, and thriven by none." Seneca had been translated, and published collectively, six years before Nash wrote. He may have intended to speak generally, and without more individual allusion than a ern poet, when, in the very same spirit, he wrote the couplet, "Some clerk foredoom'd his father's soul to cross, Who pens a stanza when he should ingross."

"The condition of this obligation ys suche, that if hereafter there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason of any precontract, consanguinitie, affinitie, or by any other lawfull meanes whatsoever, but that William Shagspere one thone partie, and Anne Hathwey, of Stratford in the Dioces of Worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony together, and in the same after wards remaine and continew like man and wiffe, according unto the mod-lawes in that behalf provided: and moreover, if there be not at this present time any action, sute, quarrel, or demaund, moved or depending before any judge, ecclesiastical or temporal, for and concerning any suche lawfull lett or impediment: and moreover, if the said William Shagspere do not proceed to solemnization of marriadg with the said Anne Hathwey without the consent of her frinds: and also if the said William do, upon his owne proper costs and expenses, defend and save harmles the Right Reverend Father in God, Lord John Bushop of Worcester, and his offycers, for licencing them the said William and Anne to be maried together with once asking of the bannes of matrimony betwene them, and for all other causes which may ensue by reason or occasion thereof, that then the said obliga tion to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand and abide in fulle force and vertue."

[graphic]

4 It is certain also that Shakespeare wrote with great facility, and that his compositions required little correction. This fact we have upon the indubitable assertion of Ben Jonson, who thus speaks in his "Discoveries," written in old age, when, as he tells us, his memory began to fail, and printed with the date of 1641 :-"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand! which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who chuse that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted; and to

The marks and seals of Sandells and Richardson

ceremony was performed, but certainly not at Stratfordupon-Avon,1 to which both the parties belonged, where the bondsmen resided, and where it might be expected that it would have been registered. The object of the bond was to obtain such a dispensation from the bishop of Worcester as would authorize a clergyman to unite the bride and groom after only a single publication of the banns; and it is not to be concealed, or denied, that the whole proceeding seems to indicate haste and secresy. However, it ought not to escape notice that the seal used when the bond was executed, although damaged, has upon it the initials R. H., as if it had belonged to R. Hathaway, the father of the bride, and had been used on the occasion with his consent.2

Considering all the circumstances, there might be good reasons why the father of Anne Hathaway should concur in the alliance, independently of any regard to the worldly prospects of the parties. The first child of William and Anne Shakespeare was christened Susanna on 26th May, 1583. Anne was between seven and eight years older than her young husband, and several passages in Shakespeare's plays have been pointed out by Malone, and repeated by other biographers, which seem to point directly at the evils resulting from unions in which the parties were misgraffed in respect of years." The most remarkable of these is certainly the well known speech of the Duke to Viola, in "Twelfth Night," (act ii. sc. 4) where he says,

"Let still the woman take

An elder than herself: so wears she to him;
So sways she level in her husband's heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,

More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.'

Afterwards the Duke adds,

"Then let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent."

Whether these lines did or did not originate in the author's reflections upon his own marriage, they are so applicable to his own case, that it seems impossible he should have written them without recalling the circumstances at tending his hasty union, and the disparity of years betwee:1 himself and his wife. Such, we know, was the confirmed opinion of Coleridge, expressed on two distinct occasions in his lectures, and such we think will be the conclusion at which most readers will arrive :-"I cannot hesitate in believing," observed Coleridge in 1815, "that in this passage from Twelfth Night,' Shakespeare meant to give a caution arising out of his own experience; and, but for the fact of the disproportion in point of years between himself and his wife, I doubt much whether the dialogue between Viola and the Duke would have received this turn1." It is incident to our nature that youths, just advancing to manhood, should feel with peculiar strength the attraction of women whose charms have reached the full-blown summer of beauty; but we cannot think that it was so necessary a consequence, as some have supposed, that Anne Hathaway should have possessed peculiar personal advantages. It may be remarked, that poets have often appeared comparatively indifferent to the features and persons of their mistresses, since, in proportion to the strength of their imaginative faculty, they

1 Malone conjectured that the marriage took place at Weston, or Billesley, but the old registers there having been lost or destroyed, it is impossible to ascertain the fact. A more recent search in the registers of some other churches in the neighbourhood of Stratford has not been attended with any success. Possibly, the ceremony was performed in the vicinity of Worcester, but the mere fact that the bond was there executed proves nothing. An examination of the registers at Worcester has been equally fruitless.

have been able to supply all physical deficiencies. Coleridge was aware, if not from his own particular case, from recorded examples, that the beauty of the objects of the affection of poets was sometimes more fanciful than real; and his notion was, that Anne Hathaway was a woman with whom the boyish Shakespeare had fallen in love, perhaps from proximity of residence and frequency of intercourse, and that she had not any peculiar recommendations of a personal description. The truth, however, is, that we have no evidence either way; and when Oldys remarks upon the 93rd sonnet, that it "seems to have been addressed by Shakespeare to his beautiful wife, on some suspicion of her infidelity"," it is clear that he was under an entire mistake as to the individual: the lines,

"So shall I live supposing thou art true
Like a deceived husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me," &c.

were most certainly not applied to his wife; and Oldys could have had no other ground for asserting that Anne Hathaway was "beautiful," than general supposition, and the erroneous belief that a sonnet like that from which we have made a brief quotation had Shakespeare's wife for its object.

The present may not be an improper opportunity for remarking (if, indeed, the remark might not be entirely spared, and the reader left to draw his own inferences) that the balance of such imperfect information as remains to us, leads us to the opinion that Shakespeare was not a very happy married man. The disparity in age between himself and his wife from the first was such, that she could not "sway level in her husband's heart;" and this difference, for a certain time at least, became more apparent as they advanced in years: may we say also, that the peculiar circumstances attending their marriage, and the birth of their first child, would not tend, even in the most grateful and considerate mind, to increase that respect which is the chief source of confidence and comfort in domestic life. To this may be added the fact (by whatever circumstances it may have been occasioned, which we shall consider presently) that Shakespeare quitted his home at Stratford a very few years after he had become a husband and a father, and that although he revisited his native town frequently, and ultimately settled there with his family, there is no proof that his wife ever returned with him to London, or resided with him during any of his lengthened sojourns in the metropolis: that she may have done so is very possible: and in 1609 he certainly paid a weekly poor-rate to an amount that may indicate that he occupied a house in Southwark capable of receiving his family, but we are here, as upon many other points, compelled to deplore the absence of distinct testimony. We put out of view the doubtful and ambiguous indications to be gleaned from Shakespeare's Sonnets, observing merely, that they contain little to show that he was of a domestic turn, or that he found any great enjoyment in the society of his wife. That such may have been the fact we do not pretend to deny, and we willingly believe that much favourable evidence upon the point has been lost: all we venture to advance on a question of so much difficulty and delicacy is, that what remains to us is not, as far as it goes, perfectly satisfactory.

public in 1818, and we have more than once heard it from him in private society.

5 The Rev. Mr. Dyce, in his Life of Shakespeare, prefixed to the Aldine edition of his Poems, 12mo. 1832. p. xi. It comprises all the main points of the biography of our poet then known.

6 When the Rev. Mr. Dyce observes that "it is unlikely that a woman devoid of personal charms should have won the youthful affections of so imaginative a being as Shakespeare," he forgets that the mere fact that Shakespeare was an "imaginative being" would render "personal charms" in his wife less necessary to his happi

2 Rowe tells us, (and we are without any other authority) that Hathaway was "said to have been a substantial yeoman," and he was most likely in possession of a seal, such as John Shakespeare hadness. used in 1579.

3 The fact is registered in this form :

"1583. May 26. Susanna daughter to William Shakspere." 4 We derive this opinion from our own notes of what fell from Coleridge upon the occasion in question. The lectures, upon which he was then engaged, were delivered in a room belonging to the Globe tavern, in Fleet-street. He repeated the same sentiment in

B

7 In his MS. notes to Langbaine, in the British Museum, as quoted by Steevens. See "Malone's Shakspeare, by Boswell," vol. xx. 306.

p.

8 We have noticed this matter more at length hereafter, with reference to the question, whether Shakespeare, in 1609, were not rated to the poor of Southwark in respect of his theatrical property, and not for any dwelling-house which he occupied.

A question was formerly agitated, which the marriage some, that made a frequent practice of deer-stealing, enbond, already quoted, tends to set at rest. Some of Shake-gaged him more than once in robbing the park that bespeare's biographers have contended that Anne Hathaway longed to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot, near Stratford. came from Shottery, within a mile of Stratford, while Ma- For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he lone argued that she was probably from Luddington, about thought, somewhat "too severely; and, in order to revenge three miles from the borough. There is no doubt that a that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though family of the name of Hathaway had been resident at this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is Shottery from the year 1543, and continued to occupy a said to have been so very bitter, that it redoubled the proshouse there long after the death of Shakespeare'; there is ecution against him to that degree, that he was obliged to also a tradition in favour of a particular cottage in the vil- leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some lage, and, on the whole, we may perhaps conclude that time, and shelter himself in London." Anne Hathaway was of that family, She is, however, described in the bond as "of Stratford," and we may take it for granted, until other and better proof is offered, that she was resident at the time in the borough, although she may have come from Shottery2. Had the parties seeking the licence wished to misdescribe her, it might have answered their purpose better to have stated her to be of any other place rather than of Stratford.

7

CHAPTER V.

We have said that Rowe is the oldest printed source of this anecdote, his "Life of Shakespeare " having been published in 1709; but Malone produced a manuscript of uncertain date, anterior, however, to the publication of Rowe's "Life," which gives the incident some confirmation. Had this manuscript authority been of the same, or even of more recent date, and derived from an independent quarter, unconnected with Rowe or his informant, it would on this account have deserved attention; but it was older than the publication of Rowe's "Life," because the Rev. R. Davies, who added it to the papers of Fulman, (now in the library of Corpus Christi College) died in 17075. Rowe (as he distinctly admits) obtained not a few of his materials from Shakespeare's twins, Hamnet and Judith, born in 1585. His Betterton, the actor, who died the year after Rowe's "Life" departure from Stratford. The question of deer-stealing came out, and who, it has been repeatedly asserted, paid a from Sir Thomas Lucy considered. Authorities for the visit to Stratford expressly to glean such particulars as story; Rowe, Betterton, Fulman's MSS., Oldys. Ballad could be obtained regarding Shakespeare. In what year by Shakespeare against Sir Thomas Lucy. Proof, in op position to Malone, that Sir Thomas Lucy had deer: his he paid that visit is not known, but Malone was of opinion present of a buck to Lord Ellesmere. Other inducements that it was late in life: on the contrary, we think that it to Shakespeare to quit Stratford. Companies of players must have been comparatively early in Betterton's career, encouraged by the Corporation. Several of Shakespeare's when he would naturally be more enthusiastic in a pursuit fellow-actors from Stratford and Warwickshire. The of the kind, and when he had not been afflicted by that disPrincely Pleasures of Kenilworth. order from which he suffered so severely in his later years, and to which, in fact, he owed his death. Betterton was born in 1635, and became an actor before 1660; and we should not be disposed to place his journey to Stratford later than 1670 or 1675, when he was thirty-five or forty years old. He was at that period in the height of his popularity, and being in the frequent habit of playing such parts as Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, we may readily believe that he would be anxious to collect any information regarding the author of those tragedies that then existed in his native town. We therefore apprehend, that Betterton must have gone to Stratford many years before the Rev. Richard Davies made his additions to Fulman's brief account of Shakespeare, for Fulman's papers did not devolve into his hands until 1688. The conclusion at which we arrive is, that Rowe's printed account is in truth older, as far as regards its origin in Betterton's inquiries, than the manuscript authority produced by Malone; and certainly the latter does not come much recommended to us on any other ground. Davies must have been ignorant both of persons and plays; but this very circumstance may possibly be looked upon as in favour of the originality and genuineness of what he furnishes. He does not tell us from whence, nor from whom, he procured his information, but it reads name, and he was ignorant that such a character as Justice Clodpate is not to be found in any of Shakespeare's plays.

In the beginning of 1585 Shakespeare's wife produced him twins-a boy and a girl-and they were baptized at Stratford Church on the 2d Feb. in that year. Malone supposed, and the supposition is very likely well founded, that Hamnet Sadler and his wife Judith stood sponsors for the infants, which were baptized by the Christian names of the godfather and godmother, Hamnet and Judith. It is a fact not altogether unimportant, with relation to the terms of affection between Shakespeare and his wife in the subsequent part of his career, that she brought him no more children, although in 1585 she was only thirty years old.

That Shakespeare quitted his home and his family not long afterwards has not been disputed, but no ground for this step has ever been derived from domestic disagreements. It has been alleged that he was obliged to leave Stratford on account of a scrape in which he had involved himself by stealing, or assisting in stealing, deer from the grounds of Charlcote, the property of Sir Thomas Lucy, about five miles from the borough. As Rowe is the oldest authority in print for this story, we give it in his own words:" He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company; and among them

1 Richard Hathaway, alias Gardener, of Shottery, had a daughter named Johanna, baptized at Stratford church on 9th May, 1566; but there is no trace of the baptism of Anne Hathaway.

2 From an extract of a letter from Abraham Sturley, dated 24 Jan., 1598, printed in "Malone's Shakspeare by Boswell," vol. ii. P. 266, it appears that our great dramatist then contemplated the purchase of some odd yard-land or other at Shottery." This intention perhaps arose out of the connexion of his wife with the village.

3 The registration is, of course, dated 2 Feb., 1584, as the year 1585 did not at that date begin until after 25th March: it runs thus:"1584. Feb. 2. Hamnet & Judith sonne & daughter to Willia Shakspere."

by Oldys prior in point of date to any other. According to him, a
6 We may, perhaps, consider the authority for the story obtained
gentleman of the name of Jones, of Turbich in Worcestershire, died
in 1703, at the age of ninety, and he remembered to have heard, from
several old people of Stratford, the story of Shakespeare's robbing Sir
makes mention, had been affixed on the park-gate, as an additional
Thomas Lucy's park; and they added that the ballad of which Rowe
exasperation to the knight. Oldys preserved a stanza of this satiri-
cal effusion, which he had received from a person of the name of
Wilkes a relation of Mr. Jones: it runs thus:

"A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scare-crowe, at London an asse;
If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it :
He thinks himself great,

4 There was an actor called Hamnet (the name is sometimes spelt Hamlet, see "Memoirs of Edward Alleyn," p. 127) in one of the London companies at a subsequent date. It is not at all impossible that, like not a few players of that day, he came from Warwickshire. 5 The terms used by the Rev. Mr. Davies are these: "He [Shakespeare] was much given to all unluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Lucy, who had him oft whipped and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native country, to his great advancement. But his revenge was so great that he is his Justice Clodpate; and calls him a great man, and that, in allusion to his name, bore three louses rampant for his What is called a "complete copy of the verses," contained in "Maarms." Fulman's MSS. vol. xv. Here we see that Davies calls Sir lone's Shakspeare, by Boswell," vol. ii. p. 565, is evidently not genThomas Lucy only "Sir Lucy," as if he did not know his Christian uine.

Yet an asse in his state
We allow by his ears but with asses to mate.

If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscall it,
Sing lowsie Lucy, whatever befall it."

as if it had been obtained from some source independent of ground that Sir Thamas Lucy never had any park at CharlBetterton, and perhaps even from inquiries on the spot. cote or elsewhere, but it admits of an easy and immediate The whole was obviously exaggerated and distorted, but answer; for, although Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, he whether by Davies, or by the person from whom he derived may have had deer, and that his successor had deer, though the story, we must remain in doubt. The reverend gentle-no park, can be proved, we think, satisfactorily. Malone man died three years before Betterton, and both may cer- has remarked that Sir Thomas Lucy never seems to have tainly have been indebted for the information to the same sent the corporation of Stratford a buck, a not unusual parties; but most likely Davies simply recorded what he present to a body of the kind from persons of rank and had heard. wealth in the vicinity. This may be so, and the fact may In reflecting upon the general probability or improbabil- be accounted for on several grounds; but that the Sir ity of this important incident in Shakespeare's life, it is not Thomas Lucy, who succeeded his father in 1600, made such to be forgotten, as Malone remarks, that deer-stealing, at gifts, though not perhaps to the corporation of Stratford, the period referred to, was by no means an uncommon is very certain. When Lord Keeper Egerton entertained offence; that it is referred to by several authors, and pun- Queen Elizabeth at Harefield, in August 1602, many of the ished by more than one statute. Neither was it considered nobility and gentry, in nearly all parts of the kingdom, to include any moral stain, but was often committed by sent him an abundance of presents to be used or consumed young men, by way of frolic, for the purpose of furnishing in the entertainment, and on that occasion Sir Thomas Lucy a feast, and not with any view to sale or emolument. If contributed "a buck," for which a reward of 6s. 8d. was Shakespeare ever ran into such an indiscretion, (and we given to the bringer. This single circumstance shows that own that we cannot entirely discredit the story) he did no if he had no park, he had deer, and it is most likely that he more than many of his contemporaries; and one of the inherited them from his father. Thus we may pretty safely ablest, most learned, and bitterest enemies of theatrical conclude that Sir Thomas Lucy who resided at Charlperformances, who wrote just before the close of the six-cote when Shakespeare was in his youth, had venison to be teenth century, expressly mentions deer-stealing as a venial stolen, although it does not at all necessarily follow that crime of which unruly and misguided youth was sometimes Shakespeare was ever concerned in stealing it. guilty, and he couples it merely with carousing in taverns and robbing orchards'.

It is very possible, therefore, that the main offence against Sir Thomas Lucy was, not stealing his deer, but writing the ballad, and sticking it on his gate; and for this Shakespeare may have been so "severely prosecuted" by Sir Thomas Lucy, as to render it expedient for him to abandon Stratford "for some time." Sir Thomas Lucy died in 1600, and the mention of deer-stealing, and of the "dozen white luces" by Slender, and of " the dozen white lowses" by Sir Hugh Evans, in the opening of "The Merry Wives of Windsor," seems too obvious to be mistaken, and leads us to the conviction that the comedy was written before the demise of Sir Thomas Lucy, whose indignation Shakespeare had incurred. True it is, that the coat of arms of Sir Thomas Lucy contained only " three luces (pike-fishes) hariant, argent," but it is easy to imagine, that while Shakespeare would wish the ridicule to be understood and felt by the knight and his friends, he might not desire that it should be too generally intelligible, and therefore multiplied the luces to "a dozen," instead of stating the true number. We believe that "The Merry Wives of Windsor was written before 1600, among other reasons, because we are convinced that Shakespeare was too generous in his nature to have carried his resentment beyond the grave, and to have cast ridicule upon a dead adversary, whatever might have been his sufferings while he was a living one.

Malone has attacked the story of deer-stealing on the

1 Dr. John Rainolds, in his "Overthrow of Stage Playes," 4to, 1599, p. 22. Some copies of the work (one of which is in the library of Lord Francis Egerton) bear date in 1600, and purport to have been printed at Middleburgh: they are, in fact, the same edition, and there is little doubt that they were printed in London, although no name is found at the bottom of any of the title-pages. His words on the point to which we are now referring, are these "Time of recrea- | tion is necessary, I grant; and think as necessary for scholars, that are scholars indeed, I mean good students, as it is for any yet in my opinion it were not fit for them to play at stool-ball among wenches, nor at mum-chance or maw with idle loose companions, nor at trunks in guild-halls, nor to dance about may-poles, nor to rifle in ale-houses, nor to carouse in taverns, nor to steal deer, nor to rob orchards.”

This work was published at the time when the building of a new theatre, called the Fortune, belonging to Henslowe and Alleyn, was exciting a great deal of general attention, and particular animosity on the part of the Puritans. To precisely the same import as the above quotation we might produce a passage from Forman's Diary, referred to by Malone, and cited by Mr. Halliwell, in a note to "The First Part of the Contention between the Houses, York and Lancaster," printed for the Shakespeare Society, p. 106. One of the most curious illustrations of this point is derived from a MS. note by Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, in a copy of Roper's Life of Sir Thomas More, edit. 1642, sold among the books of Horace Walpole. Speaking of Aurelian Townshend, who, he says, was a poor poet living in Barbican, near the Earl of Bridgewater's, he adds that he had a fine fair daughter, mistress to the Palgrave first, and then afterwards to the noble Count of Dorset, a Privy Councillor, and a Knight of the Garter, and a deer-stealer," &c. It was to William Earl of

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The question whether he did or did not quit Stratford for the metropolis on this account, is one of much importance in the poet's history, but it is one also upon which we shall, in all probability, never arrive at certainty. Our opinion is that the traditions related by Rowe, and mentioned in Fulman's and in Oldys' MSS. (which do not seem to have originated in the same source) may be founded upon an actual occurrence; but, at the same time, it is very possible that that alone did not determine Shakespeare's line of conduct. His residence in Stratford may have been rendered inconvenient by the near neighbourhood of such a hostile and powerful magistrate, but perhaps he would nevertheless not have quitted the town, had not other circumstances combined to produce such a decision. stances might be it is our business now to inquire.

Aubrey, who was a very curious and minute investigator, although undoubtedly too credulous, says nothing about deer-stealing, but he tells us that Shakespeare was "inclined naturally to poetry and acting, and to this inclination he attributes his journey to London at an early age. That this youthful propensity existed there can be no dispute, and it is easy to trace how it may have been promoted and strengthened. The corporation of Stratford seem to have given great encouragement to companies of players arriving there. We know from various authorities that when itinerant actors came to any considerable town, it was their custom to wait upon the mayor, bailiff, or other head of the corporation, in order to ask permission to perform, either

Pembroke, and Philip Earl of Montgomery, that the player-editors dedicated the folio Shakespeare of 1623; and one of Earl Philip's MS. notes, in the volumne from which we have already quoted, contains the following mention of seven dramatic poets, including Shakespeare:-"The full and heightended style of Master Chapman; the laboured and understanding works of Mr. Jhonson; Mr. Beaumont, Mr. Fletcher, (brother to Nat Fetcher, Mrs. White's servant, sons to Bishop Fletcher of London, and great tobacconist, and married to my Lady Baker)—Mr. Shakespear, Mr. Deckar, Mr. Heywood." Horace Walpole registers on the title-page of the volume that the notes were made by Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.

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2 See "The Egerton Papers," printed by the Camden Society, 4to, 1840. pp. 350. 355. The editor of that volume observes: Many of these [presents] deserve notice, but especially one of the items, where it is stated that Sir Thomas Lucy (against whom Shakespeare is said to have written a ballad) sent a present of a buck.' Malone discredits the whole story of the deer-stealing, because Sir Thomas Lucy had no park at Charlcote: 'I conceive (he says) it will very readily be granted that Sir Thomas Lucy could not lose that of which he was never possessed.' We find, however, from what follows, that he was possessed of deer, for he sent a present of a buck to Lord Ellesmere, in 1602." He gave a buck," because he had bred it himself, and because it was perhaps well known that he kept deer; and he would hardly have exposed himself to ridicule by buying a buck for a present, under the ostentatious pretence that it was of his own rearing. Malone thought that he had triumphantly overthrown the deer-stealing story, but his refutation amounts to little or nothing. Whether it is nevertheless true is quite a different question.

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